


setuka

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Category: Jodhaa-Akbar (2008)
Genre: 4+1, Brother-Sister Relationships, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Missing Scenes, Oneshot, Yuletide 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:07:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27823468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: Four times Jodhaa wanted to tell her husband about Sujamal, and the one time she did.setuka (Sanskrit): bridge
Relationships: Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar/Mariam-uz-Zamani | Jodhaa Bai, Mariam-uz-Zamani | Jodhaa Bai & Sujamal (b.c.1533)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	setuka

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dialux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialux/gifts).



It is not relief that sends Jodhaa collapsing onto the divan after Jalaluddin Muhammad agrees to the marriage, but shock and anger.

Shock, that her presumptuous conditions were not enough to appall the Mughal barbarian into breaking the alliance, that she will have to marry him after all.

Anger, that in the process of doing so, he dares to claim _her_ traditions, _her_ culture, _her_ life for himself.

"I, too, am born on the same soil as her, and I share the same Rajput courage and candor."

 _No!_ She wants to cry out. _You are an invader and an infidel, nothing more, and you are no Rajput._

That would be Sujamal Bhai-sa, Rajput bold and Rajput true. Bhai-sa, whose desertion is the reason she has to marry this tyrant.

She says not a word of protest, once the negotiations are completed, and does not flinch when her grandmother bathes her in milk and water.

_My father, good King Bharmal of Amer, betrayed us both. He sold Bhai-sa's throne to his own son Bhagwant Das, and he sold my hand to this Mughal._

If Bhai-sa were king, he never would have bartered Jodhaa away like this. He would not rule by crushing all who oppose him.

_I would write to him, and he would take me away from here, but I do not shirk my duties._

All of this and more Jodhaa wants to tell Jalaluddin Muhammad, but instead all she says is _Qubool hai_ , the foreign words bitter on her tongue.

* * *

Agra is not the maws of death she expected it to be, but nor is it paradise, and she staves off thoughts of home. It is too painful.

But her husband wants to know more about her, and her childhood, and slowly, he coaxes tales of Amer from her.

"We had birds at home, too," she says, one day after they accidentally teach Shah and Shurukh several particularly colorful Persian curses. "Not parrots, but sparrows and pigeons and doves. My mother and I used to scatter bird seed to them, and they would flock around us and eat right from our hands."

_Bhai-sa hated birds, no matter how he tried to lure them. They made him nervous, he said, such feathery flapping creatures. They could sense his fear and they always ended up pecking him, and I would laugh to see him so disgruntled and scratched all over._

"My father has a small library, carefully curated with selections from all over Rajputana, and it's his pride and joy," Jodhaa offers another time. "On days when there were no festivals or court business to be heard, he'd choose a scroll or a book and we'd go to the rooftop, where he would read to me, in his own voice, rather than have a servant do it."

Her husband's face falls, and too late Jodhaa remembers that his own father died when he was thirteen, and even before that, the late Humayun was almost certainly not the type of man to read aloud to his son. Emperors have far less time than kings to be fathers.

She wants to apologize for her misstep, but already the darkness has disappeared from his countenance, and again he is his affable self. Jodhaa returns a wan smile and does not say _But my brother-cousin was the best reader of all, and to listen to him was to find yourself spellbound._

Bhagwant Das sends his son Maan Singh to the Mughal court, to learn more about Amer's new sovereigns, and Jodhaa finds herself telling her husband about her nephew's dark past. "You might think him a polite and upright young man, but you must know that whenever I was in the courtyard, painting with my sisters and my other _sakhis_ , I always had to be on guard. One moment's distraction, and the little rascal would splatter paint all over my canvas."

Her husband laughs, a full-throated guffaw with his head thrown back, and Jodhaa marvels that she can bring out such a reaction in him. She does not say _Bhagwant Das always had Maan Singh duly punished, and my mother would chide me for painting so close to the boys' practice, but only Bhai-sa cared enough to wipe my tears and reassure me that the next painting I made would be even better. He was also the one who decided I needed to learn how to avoid misattention, and conspired to teach me the ways of the sword._

Every time Jodhaa is tempted to give voice to the fond reminiscences murmuring in her heart, she reminds herself of the tiny vial and the letter tucked away in her trunk. Each day in Agra, her husband seems less a monster and more a man, and she feels herself less an outsider, and still she speaks nothing of Bhai-sa.

* * *

After Adham Khan's execution, Jodhaa is shaken.

For all that she is a master of the _talwar_ , she has never witnessed death. Now in one afternoon, she has _seen_ Ataga Khan's blood on that sword, gleaming in the sun… she has _heard_ the crunch of bones, each time Adham was flung off the roof.

By her husband.

He has killed his own brother.

 _How could you do it?_ She wants to ask him.

_Would you do the same to my brother?_

It does not matter, that Sujamal is not Adham, no thug who would openly murder a prime minister. He has deserted the city of his birth and is consorting with other kingdoms to regain his throne. To someone as imperial as Jodhaa's husband, treachery is treachery and treason is treason.

She locks away all her words. Now is not the time to burden him with her own troubles, not when he is still grieving a double loss.

* * *

Back in Amer, and again rage burns within Jodhaa, between her ribs and behind her teeth and beneath the soles of her feet. When she dreams, she sees the bridge where she and her husband stood at opposite ends. The gulf between Rajput and Mughals, between brother and cousin. She should never have tried to cross it, she should have known better.

 _Both of you are so convinced you know what is right. You both judged me guilty without even bothering to listen_.

Half the time she swings the sword at her husband, she imagines it is Bhai-sa instead.

* * *

It is not until the day word comes of Sharifuddin Hussain's involvement in her husband's near-assassination, and Sujamal's possible role in it. Only after they have become husband and wife in truth, and erased all the other lingering doubts between them, that they can say all the words they kept locked inside.

"I wish you had told me about him," her husband whispers, as they lie curled together in their bed. It is late at night, the candles burning low.

"I should have trusted you," she whispers back. She burrows herself deeper into his embrace, trying not to think about how much heartache she could have saved them all. Would her husband have sympathized with Bhai-sa's plight, and seen the injustice, and given him his rights as Crown Prince early on?

Her head is tucked under his chin, and she can feel when his jaw shifts, knows he is pondering something. "But I don't know if I would have listened then. If I had learned about what he was doing, before you taught me what it is to rule and to look into the minds and hearts of those whom I command, I might simply have viewed him as a thief and ordered him arrested then and there."

It is a weighty admission, and Jodhaa knows it a mark of the love he bears her, that he can humble himself like this. Such love is a garden, her husband's Urdu poems sing, and gardens take time to grow. They must be watered, and nourished with sunlight, pruned with necessary, and only then can the flowers be cut.

"But I still wish you had told me about him," her husband presses on. "He was - is - your brother. Your favorite, Bhagwant Das has told me. Despite being your cousin. He was dear to you, and for that reason I would know more of him."

Jodhaa closes her eyes to keep the tears from spilling. Her husband wants to know more about the man possibly responsible for his assassination, simply because he was the champion of his wife's girlhood.

"Bhai-sa is good and brave," Jodhaa starts, the words flat and not at all empress-like. How can she begin to describe what Sujamal was to her? Her mother and father, her other brothers, her sisters all love her, she knows that beyond doubt. But she also knows that ever since she was originally betrothed to Ratan Singh at ten, they have viewed her as a bride first and a daughter second. Nor has she forgotten how they immediately gave her into another alliance, mere days after she'd lost the man she expected to marry for a decade, and never will she forget how ice sluiced through her when all her mother had to offer her was that little vial. She cannot forget, even when she now considers her husband the dearest blessing her Shyam sent to her.

Bhai-sa alone saw her as more than that, cared to teach her the art of swordfighting and listen to what she had to say, when others would have smiled at her in fond indulgence and then moved on. He entrusted her with his secrets, how much he longed for the throne of Amer, and his plans for ruling, and he kept Jodhaa's confidences in turn. He would have cast aside safety and honor and pride for her, would have answered her letter at a moment's notice and ridden away with her in the dead of night, not cared about the broken alliance or her dereliction of duty or any of the consequences, because she meant that much to him.

The tears Jodhaa had been trying to staunch brim over, and they carve hot trails down her cheeks. Gently, her husband wipes them away with his thumbs, kissing her forehead and humming endearments into her ears.

"He thinks I betrayed him," she chokes out. "He loved me more than anyone else, and he's convinced I set up a trap for him."

How alike her husband and her brother are, Jodhaa wonders, and how long she had loathed the former and lionized the latter, when the cadences of their souls are so similar. Both of them stalwartly brave and with an idealistic streak a _kos_ wide, covering up hearts raw and smarting from being betrayed by the men they considered fathers. Both of them are the only ones to value Jodhaa beyond her face and her purity, to allow her her voice and to give her words credence.

Both of them might meet untimely ends on the battlefield.

Jodhaa splays her hand out over her husband's chest, to remind herself that he is warm and bounding and beating. Just to the left of his heart, she can feel the ridges of the arrow-scar, and she fights not to remember her husband, shivering with fever on this very bed.

 _We are Emperor and Empress together,_ she reminds herself, _beloved of each other and blessed by Allah and by Krishna._

**Author's Note:**

>  _Qubool hai_ is Urdu for "I accept", the words of consent spoken by bride and groom at Muslim weddings.
> 
>  _Sakhi_ means “female friend” in Sanskrit.
> 
> Maan Singh was the historical Mariam-uz-Zamani's nephew, and eventually famous as Akbar's courtier. I have assumed that the "Maan Singh" in the opening scene who flips paint over Jodhaa's artwork is this nephew.
> 
>  _Talwar_ means blade.
> 
> Shyam is another name for Lord Krishna.
> 
> A _kos_ is an Indian unit of measurement of about 3.22 km, used since the BC years but standardized under the historical Akbar's rule. It is referred to in the scene where Jalal's army is sighted by Sharifuddin.


End file.
